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Monasticism As "Lay" Spirituality in Merton's Later Life and Work

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Monasticism As "What I Wear Is Pants": Monasticism as "Lay" Spirituality in Merton's Later Life and Work Patrick O'Connell I n his correspondence with Rosemary Ruether, we find Thomas Merton making some rather disconcerting comments about his life as a hermit. The solitude he had sought for years as the fulfillment of his monastic vocation now seems to be presented virtually as a repudia­ tion of that vocation. On February 14, 1967, he writes, "I am in a posi­ tion where l am practically laicized and de-institutionalized, and living like all the other old bats who live alone in the hills in this part of the country and I feel like a human being again. My hermit life is ex­ pressly a lay life. I never wear the habit except when at the monastery and I try to be as much on my own as I can and like the people around the country."1 Three weeks later, he refers again to his '"secularized' existence as a hermit" and explains, "I am not only leading a more 'worldly' life (me and the rabbits), but am subtly infecting the monas­ tery with worldly ideas,"2 through, he may mean, his weekly talks to the community on political and literary topics. Such remarks may be interpreted as an expression of Merton's disillusion with institutional­ ized monastic life in general and with the Gethsemani community in particular, or as a rather disingenuous, even somewhat duplicitous, at­ tempt to justiiy his present vocation to a particularly fierce critic of 1. Thomas Merton, The Hidden Gro1111d of Love: Letters on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, ed. William H. Shannon (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1985) 501; the same letter is also found in Mary Tardiff, OP, ed., At Home in the World: The Letters of Tl1omas Merton and Rosemary Radford Ruether (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995) 23. 2. Hidden Ground of Love, 505; At Home in the World, 38. 35 36 Patrick O'Connell "W1iat I Wear Is Pants" 37 monasticism.3 Both of these motives are no doubt present to some ex­ ousness, which is, however, not . a withdrawal, a denial. It is a tent. But I would like to propose that underlying the disillusion and/or mode of presence." He concludes his reflection by aligning monasti­ the defensiveness there is a more complex, and ultimately more satis­ cism with this stance rather than a more public, ecclesiastical witness: fying, explanation for Merton's use of this sort of language: his studies "Paradoxically, then, Bonhoeffer's mode of unnoticed presence in the and his own experience had convinced him that a "lay" spirituality world is basically monastic as opposed to the 'clerical' or 'priestly' was not only compatible with monasticism but from a certain per­ presence, which is official, draws attention to itself and issues its for­ spective was an integral part of monastic history and identity. mal message of institutional triumph."4 Thus if the term "lay" is con­ Such a proposal may initially strike one as illogical if not ab­ trasted not with "religious" but with "clerical," it would seem that surd: lay and monastic states would seem to be polar opposites, mu­ Merton is locating monasticism on the "lay" side of the division, where tually exclusive, and in one sense they certainly are. By definition the it is well situated, not incidentally, to enter into dialogue not only with vowed religious life is distinguished from the Jay, secular state, and the "secular" Christianity of a Bonhoeffer but with persons of other monks are religious par excellence. But "lay" can also be used to con­ faiths, or even of no religious faith at all. trast with "clerical," a state which is by no means identical with "reli­ gious," though in popular perception they are easily confused. Merton I himself makes note of the difference, and indicates its significance for a proper understanding of monastic life, in reflecting on Dietrich The foundation for this position is not merely eccentric or idio­ Bonhoeffer's Prison Letters, which he calls "very monastic in their syncratic personal preference or practice on Merton's part. It is a con­ own way." By this surprising statement he apparently means that clusion grounded in his study of monastic origins. He notes, "The monk Bonhoeffer's vision of "religionless Christianity," which does not pub­ was originally a layman (priests were exceptional) who lived alone in the licly call attention to itself, has a dimension of hiddenness comparable desert outside the framework of any institution, even of the Christian to the "desert" quality of monasticism. "His 'worldliness,"' Merton and Ecclesial institution."5 This statement should not be taken to imply continues, "can only be understood in the light of this 'monastic' seri- ' 4. Thomas Merton, A Vow of Conversation: Journals 1964-1965 (New York: 3. Though Ruether's criticism of monastic "withdrawal" is intense, particu­ Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988) 65-6; a slightly different version of this passage is found larly in the early letters to Merton (see the letter of early March, 1967 [Al Home in the in Thomas Merton, Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage­ World, 27-30]), in a generally overlooked article entitled "Monks and Marxists: A foumals, Volume Five: 1963-1965, ed. Robert E. Daggy, (San Francisco: HarperCollins, Look at the Catholic Left" (Christianity and Crisis, 33:7 [April 30, 1973] 75-9) she ex­ 1997) 129. ln Contemplation in a World of Action (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), plicitly credits the "monastic spirituality of Thomas Merton" (along with Dorothy Merton relates this "monastic" dimension of Bonhoeffer's thought to his imprison­ Day and the Catholic Worker movement) with being at the root of U.S. Catholic in­ ment: "Bonhoeffer, regarded as an opponent of all that monasticism stands for, him­ volvement in work for peace and justice; see particularly 76: "Here it was the prob­ self realized the need for certain 'monastic' conditions in order to maintain a true ing mind of Thomas Merton that provided the hermeneutic for the spirituali ty perspective in and on the world. He developed these ideas when he was awaiting taking place in Dan Berrigan, Jim Forest, Jim Douglas [sic] and others. In retreats at his execution in a Nazi prison" (7-8). Reflecting on Bonhoeffer's Ethics in his Gethsemane [sic], through his writings and voluminous correspondence, Merton Working Notebook #16, from the second half of 1965, Merton writes, "The monk origi­ helped to form a spirituality that transformed prayer into protest, contemplation nally broke out of the clerical 'space' of the Church. To roam in the desert, the ulti­ into resistance to the powers and principalities of a murderous world.... Thus, in mate of the world, the place relegated to the devil-to restore the desert to condition the monastic spirituality of Thomas Merton, traditional Christian rejection of 'this of paradise-by showing it is not a space belonging to the devil. This is the real spirit world' took on new and concrete meaning, not as a struggle against flesh and blood, of Vatican li-as opposed to Vat I, etc., when this was not at all dear yet" (48). but as a struggle against the powers and principalities of the great empires, with 5. Contemplation in a World of Action, 239; see also The Inner Experience (VIII): America as their most recent representative. Here monastic spirituality was recon­ "the first monks of all, the Egyptian desert Fathers, the pioneers of the monastic and nected with its apocalyptic root." Ruether goes on to compare this personalistic, contemplative lives, were lay people" (Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 19:4 [1984] 338). In "prophetic" stance with the more praxis-oriented, Marxist-influenced approach A History of Christian Spirituality I: The Spirituality of the New Testament and tire Fathers found in Latin America and elsewhere (what would come to be known as liberation (1960; trans. Mary P. Ryan [London: Bums & Oates, 1963]), Louis Bouyer writes: "The theology), using each to critique what she perceives as the shortcomings of the other. monk was simply a Christian, and, more precisely, a devout layman, who limited 38 Patrick O'Connell "What f Wear ls Pants" 39 a separation from the wider Church, but simply that the monk's partici­ mark of primitive monasticism. "In the earliest days of desert monas­ pation in the Church does not consist in fulfilling a specific organiza­ ticism," Merton writes, "there were no vows, no written rules, and in­ tional role.6 "Christian solitude," Merton emphasizes, is "essentially an stitutional structure was kept at a minimum. The monastic expression of the mystery of the Church, even when in some sense it im­ commitment was taken with extreme and passionate seriousness, but plies a certain freedom from institutional structures."7 But this "freedom this commitment was not protected by judicial sanctions or by institu­ is never a freedom from the Church but always a freedom in the Church tional control."9 Monastic formation depended on personal authority, and a contribution to the Church's own charismatic heritage."8 "the charismatic authority of wisdom, experience and love,"10 rather This charismatic dimension, the willingness to be led, like Jesus, than formal office, on relationships rather than regulations: "There by the Spirit into the desert, to allow all familiar roles and usual com­ was strict obedience on the part of the novice who sought to reproduce forts and securities to be stripped away so that God alone might be in his own life all the actions and thoughts of his spiritual master or 'spir­ one's sole protection and child of God one's only identity, was the hall- itual father.' But the spiritual father had been chosen freely because of his own experience and his evident charism of renunciation and vision."11 himself to taking the most radical means to make his Christianity integral" (317).
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